Restaurant Insider

How much would you donate (dough-nate?) to bring a late-night donut shop to Capitol Hill?
Chef Justin Newtsrum (Portage Bay Café, Crave) hopes it’s enough to help him reach his $16,000 goal to open a deep-fried dream called 9th & Hennepin. He's a big Tom Waits fan.

A hungry crowd buzzed around Friday Harbor's Brickworks building long before doors opened for the first ever Bite of the San Juan Islands on Sunday. Friends of vendors offered help, a barely veiled excuse to get the first peek at the dozens of booths full of delicious things. Literal boatloads of people walked directly from ferries toward the scent of fresh-baked bread. And no one left until long after the teardown time, everyone hanging on to help lighten kegs carried over from Orcas, or slurp just one more freshly shucked oyster.

Adam Stevenson, who made a name for himself as the chef of the now long-gone Earth & Ocean restaurant (replaced by TRACE) at the W Hotel, is joining forces with his wife to market a new line of small batch cashew milk.

It’s been a year filled with a crushing amount of new restaurants. So much so, some of the important ones are getting lost in the shuffle. The one that immediately comes to mind, for me anyway, is Tray Kitchen.

Roger Martinho may not be a household name here in Seattle, but give it time. He’s the incredibly talented semi-new pastry chef at Ba Bar, who’s been whipping up classic French desserts since the beginning of the year. That includes macarons.

Last night, I drove down to Portland for a 16 hour whirlwind trip (thank you Jupiter Hotel for the last minute accommodations!). It's not something I would normally do during the week, but this was important: an invitation to attend one of Renee Erickson’s book launch parties.

Back in June, I met up with Shaun McCrain shortly after he left Book Bindery (which is now Hommage) to talk about his next steps. He kept pretty quiet on details, but I could tell he had a specific vision in mind for his next chapter: a small intimate restaurant that he and his business (and life) partner Jill Kinney could be proud of, along with their regular customers.

The former real estate developer who brought 99 Park to life in Belleuve has two more restaurants in the works.
Micah Pittman tells me that he plans to open a cool new sports bar and a Spanish tapas lounge right across the street from his newest eastside restaurant that just launched in late August. He had just signed the lease when I spoke to him Thursday night.

In the current issue of Seattle Magazine, I review Intermezzo Carmine in Pioneer Square. The most fun I had with this story was not stuffing my face with cicchetti from this new-ish Il Terrazzo off-shoot, but talking to Maria Smeraldo, Carmine’s widow.

Trove has only been open for about a week, which might explain why a lot of folks seem to be confused about the format of this four-pronged Capitol Hill restaurant cooked up by the same couple who brought us Joule and Revel.